Skip to footer

Love Eddie Van Halen? How you could buy his custom Charvel guitar.

About 300 guitars, including instruments associated with Eric Clapton, Elvis Presley and Eddie Van Halen, are heading to a New York City auction for late February. 

|
Greg Allen/Invision/AP/File
David Lee Roth, left, and Eddie Van Halen of Van Halen perform at the Nikon at Jones Beach Theater on Thursday, Aug. 13, 2015, in Wantagh, N.Y. About 300 guitars, including instruments associated with Eric Clapton, Elvis Presley and Eddie Van Halen, are heading to a New York City auction. But get ready to splurge: you could pay anywhere between $20,000 to $200,000 for a guitar.
  • By Staff Associated Press

| NEW YORK

About 300 guitars, including instruments associated with Eric Clapton, Elvis Presley and Eddie Van Halen, are heading to a New York City auction.

Also on tap at Guernsey's sale Feb. 27 are acoustic guitars from the late 1800s and one played by actor Robert Blake in the film "In Cold Blood."

Among the top highlights is a 1952 Gibson Super 400 CES 7-String made for late studio guitarist Tony Mottola that could bring as much as $100,000. Mottola worked with such music greats as Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Johnny Mathis and Rosemary Clooney.

There are two "In Cold Blood" guitars. One was used by Blake in the role of killer Perry Edward Smith in the 1967 Academy Award-winning movie based on the blockbuster book by Truman Capote, and the other is the actual guitar owned by Smith. They are being offered as one lot with a pre-sale estimate of $150,000 to $200,000.

A yellow-and-black Charvel guitar, customized for Eddie Van Halen in the 1980s, could bring $60,000 to $80,000. The original bill of sale made out to Van Halen is included.

A 1959 Gibson owned by Franny Beecher, the lead guitarist for the rock and roll band Bill Haley & His Comets, could fetch $20,000 to $25,000. It's one of only 57 made in 1959 in the natural finish.

Also in the auction catalog are four guitars associated with Eric Clapton, two of them signed; several Elvis Presley items, including a signed guitar; and Jimi Hendrix's guitar strap from Woodstock.

The sale also includes vintage guitars and mandolins made by string instrument maker Joseph Bohmann and more than 40 guitars from the late arranger and jazz musician Robert Yelin. About two dozen instruments owned by guitarist and singer-songwriter George Benson also are being offered.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Love Eddie Van Halen? How you could buy his custom Charvel guitar.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Music/2016/0206/Love-Eddie-Van-Halen-How-you-could-buy-his-custom-Charvel-guitar
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe